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One-Sheet, Contact/Release Info, Streaming Player, mp3 and Press Photos:

click for streaming audio
(160kbps)
Tracklist:
Sheltering Dark
Barn Owl
Don't Let Me Out mp3
Rose And Vine
As She Came Out Of The Water
Blacksnake In The Carport
(He Asks The Figure) Are You The One
Old Clothes
We Drove To Highbridge (Glass Insulators)
The Silver Cloud
The Island Moved In The Storm
Florida Rain
Foxgloves
Old Kimball
You Were Saying Goodbye
Corolla (The One You Love)
catalogue:
LSE 009
upc :859700761427
wholesale:$8.25
store:$7.43
sugg, list:$11.98
release date:Sept. 2nd, 2008
download one-sheet (PDF)
artist:
site
myspace
email
Press:
info@la-soc.com
US distribution:
chicago independent
email
radio:
apples
and cats |
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Matt Bauer
The Island Moved In The Storm
LSE 009
In 1968 a young woman was found dead along a dirt road near Eagle
Creek, north of Georgetown, Kentucky. For thirty years, she was known
only as ‘Tent Girl’, the name given to her by the Kentucky
Post & Times Star because she'd been found wrapped in canvas
resembling a tent bag. This album is a series
of overlapping narratives inspired by her story as
re-imagined to incorporate imagery and locales from Matt Bauer’s
rural Kentucky upbringing. These songs explore what it means to be home
and to be lost, what it means to pass from life to death.
The Island Moved in the Storm takes its name from a stretch of gravel
and shale in a bend of Triplett Creek where Bauer grew up. After
a hard rain, the island would "move" and change shape, adapting to
the new flow of water. The album reflects this vision of impermanence
and fleeting beauty not only in the songs that take the island as
their setting, but also in songs that expand into the wider world: The woods have “scatters of deer tracks frozen in the mud” and wild horses are glimpsed for a moment before they scatter into the trees along a shoreline. Human hair is spread around a garden to keep out rabbits only to be woven into bird nests and carried away on the wind. Girls jump from a river bridge and “their hair floats up to heaven.”
But the world of this collection of songs is one of powerful indifference
as much as passing beauty. A blacksnake crawls headless through
grass and dandelions, perhaps the same white dandelions that later
find a breeze “blowing off their heads”. A soldier lies
wounded on a battlefield, imagining a mysterious figure with a string
of bluegill, still gasping for air, hanging from her dress. As her
mascara runs “like downed telephone wires” he asks her
“are you the one / who has come to sew me up / and send me
back out?” A boy likens the meeting of his parents to a spider
trapping a fly, an image that insinuates an unbalanced relationship,
but also, as is often the case in The Island Moved in the Storm,
a sense of inevitability and natural order that is beyond judgement.
The musical arrangements retain
the economy and space of Bauer’s previous recordings
while expanding the palette of sounds and instrumentation. A range
of musician friends from Bauer's current Brooklyn base,
and from the San Francisco Bay Area, contribute to the recording. These include
Angel Deradoorian (Dirty Projectors), Alela Diane, Mariee Sioux,
Greg McMullen (Chris Whitley), Elizabeth Dotson-Westphalen (St.
Vincent), Nathan Wanta (Last of the Blacksmiths), Angela Webster
(Rhett Miller), and longtime collaborator Frank Floyd.
Recorded in closets, living rooms, kitchens, attics, bathrooms and
studios from San Francisco’s Mission District to Greenpoint,
Brooklyn to Fayette County, Kentucky, The Island Moved in the Storm is none of those places and all of them at once: It is a moment
of beauty, stolen from a fleeting world.
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Players: Matt Bauer, Madelyn Burgess, Angel Deradoorian,
Alela Diane, Elizabeth Dotson-Westphalen, Eric Elterman,
Frank Floyd,
Jay Foote,
Greg Gheorghiu,
Chad King,
Sarah Kramer,
Greg McMullen,
Karl Meyer,
Alisa Rose,
Mariee Sioux,
Nathan Wanta,
Angela Webster
Further Reading:
Tent Girl
Selected Press:
"One of this year's finest records"
-Muzzle of Bees
"Matt Bauer's banjo-driven folk songs hang together on a gossamer
thread, moving from background to foreground with an understated power."
-30music.com
"There is an economic darkness on this recording.
Lonely banjos ride along sharp ridges, horns swirl in cold creeks, and
there is subtle sense of loss in Bauer's music that leaves the impression
of a man whose demons will not be stilled."
-Skyscraper
"An album of fragile beauty"
-Under the Radar
"Matt Bauer plays a ghostly sort of folk, wreathed in delicate webs
of banjo and whispered with a lightness Sam Beam might envy."
-Philadelphia Weekly
"While the lyrics often yield to the dark side of country life, the
arrangements are thin and carry traces of the Appalachian music that saturates
the lives of Bauer's characters. His sparing use of instrumentation is
effective in creating an atmosphere around these always-unraveling narratives"
-Leo Weekly
"The Album is flawless....at times gut wrenching, it's the kind of
album you want to experience. The Island Moved In The Storm delivers a
diverse instrumentation that carries Bauer's words with a grace proving
him to be a master at work."
-BlogCritics.org
"Extremely well put-together, The Island Moved In the Storm is a
broken fairy tale, a fever dream."
-mixtapesheartbreaks
"His songs are outstanding...There's a sparseness that pervades his
debut, The Island Moved in the Storm, and it makes for an unsettling but
immediately compelling listen. Bauer's lyrics are sneaky good, utilizing
naturalistic imagery and deft turns of phrase."
-The L Magazine
"The staggering darkness and the uncomfortable weight of his songwriting
is where his magic is."
-Aversion.com
"Bauer's work is simply astounding—not just on par with Samuel
Beam's Iron and Wine bittersweet ethos, but a rival to its haunting intimacy"
-Kevchino.com
"Bauer's deft musings on violent beauty and the natural order of
things could serve as a worthy backdrop to scenes from a Terrence Malick
or Werner Herzog film."
-mog.com
"He's channeling something heavy, preparing the rest of us for a
darkness or beauty that we aren't yet ready to receive. We believe Matt
Bauer is a prophet."
- Thrasher Magazine
Press Photos:
Discography:
Title |
Format |
Catalogue
#/ Label |
Date |
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LSE 009 La
Société Expéditionnaire
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Wasps and White Roses |
CDEP |
CBR003 Crossbill Records |
2006 |
Nandina |
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